Subjects Landscape Changes

Filling valleys and other lowlands, cutting down high ground, piping streams into sewers, filling marshland, dredging and damming streams and rivers, and any other activities or infrastructure designed to alter the original topography of the city to more readily accommodate real estate development.

Map Lovers’ Monday: Philadelphia Topography

Map Lovers’ Monday: Topography of Philadelphia from 1863

Black-and-white image of a creek with people around it and a large building behind it

Dock Creek Sewer in 1849: A report on its condition made to City Councils

From Creek To Sewer

Black-and-white photograph depicts a large brick sewer tube lying on a barren landscape

Streams, islands, and ferries of early Philadelphia

Black-and-white image of a body of water with trees and shoreline in the far distance

Delaware River at Arch Street from the New Jersey side, 1914

The City and Port of Philadelphia on the River Delaware from Kensington, 1800

Philadelphia the Manufacturing and Industrial Capital map, 1906

Bird's eye view of Delaware River

Bird’s eye view of Delaware River and Philadelphia, about 1840

Penn's Treaty with the Lenape

Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (Watson’s Annals)